


You Don't Know Me

by maggiemerc



Series: Fast Cars and Slow Jazz [6]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-13 09:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4516740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiemerc/pseuds/maggiemerc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angie joins Peggy and her children on a trip to the English countryside for an important family gathering. Then someone is murdered. Children spies from Russia and old flames from boarding school and a butler are all involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this isn’t the planned sequel. It’s more a fluffy side piece that got too long. A fluffy murder mystery side piece.  
> The names of Peggy’s children are stolen wholesale from Romanimp and Ratherembarassing’s most excellent The Mothering of Things.

Howard would never fly tourist-class, but if he ever did he would say that it was a true testament of Peggy’s love for her children that she elected to take the middle seat for the cross-Atlantic flight.

It is…less than comfortable.

Angie had wrinkled her noses and looked Peggy up and down like she was thinking of having her committed when she told her about the tickets.

“You’re best pal owns a jet, and your best gal is on first name basis with half the charter companies on the Eastern seaboard. **Why** did you buy the tickets through a travel agent?”

Peggy had huffed and pointed out that neither her children or her family in England were familiar with her work in intelligence. “I have an image to maintain.”

“An uncomfortable one,” Angie had said with nothing more than a look and crossed arms.

A very, very uncomfortable one.

The children are much more game for the flight than Peggy, and the flight attendants coo and marvel over how well behaved they are and how quickly they fall asleep after the plane refuels in Newfoundland.

“I’ve done this route for two years and never met two such children so well-mannered,” one attendant whispers.

Peggy likes to think it’s because her children have espionage in their blood. They’re **born** for trans-oceanic flights in tight confines.

But it is also probably the large meals they ate and Angie insisting they they get up earlier than usual the day their flight left. They’re **exhausted** , and just the right amount of exhaustion too. Angie has a gift with the children and can play them as candidly as a piano. Peggy just has the ability to feed them and scold them and take the worst seat on a flight for them.

Sometimes she’s envious of Angie.

Who isn’t on the plane. An invitation, never extended, hung between them before she and the children left. She never offered to have Angie come even though they’ve lived together for years and those close to them think of them as a very loving and committed couple.

It just felt wrong to bring her. To invite her to a Carter family gathering where she’d be ostracized and insulted and have very little fun. All so Peggy could have someone at her back. Wrong and profoundly unfair.

The plane lands in London early in the morning when the sky is still twisting from bright blue twilight to the yellow of dawn. By then the children are both wide awake and eager to explore the city their mother’s come from. They bounce in their seats as they taxi and press against the glass in the hope of seeing some part of a city they currently know only from stories and films.

Their bout of good behavior starts to dissolve as they disembark. Suddenly Elizabeth and Richard are both British. More accurately they’re **Peggy**. Or a gross mimicry of her. They thank the attendants in clipped accents and then throw in a few “jolly goods” just to tweak Peggy.

She smiles and manages **not** to scowl at her own children.

She’s got two weeks without Angie there as a buffer. Two weeks of just her and the children and Peggy’s family.

Her father and her new stepmother, and her brother.

Who is seven.

Three years **younger** than Elizabeth and Richard.

####

When they arrive at the manse her father now calls home Elizabeth is the color of chalk and Richard looks like he might vomit out of the side of the car. Peggy has to hurriedly usher him out and try to soothe him with a hand on his back—much like her own mother did the first time she took a cab in London.

They’re…unpleasant. “I drove nicer running from cops,” Angie once groused.

The cab driver is at least polite enough to take their bags up to the door. He even helpfully rings the bell before she can ask him not too.

Which is why her father sees his grandchildren for the first time in six years as his grandson vomits up breakfast all over Eaton Square.

Sir Reginald Carter, newly retired and formerly of the War Office, shows his displeasure with nothing more than the twitch of his great mustache. The same one he’s had for the near forty years of Peggy’s life. He smiles and it has a way of pulling the sides of his mouth up into his mustache and making him look…charming.

That is something Peggy knows for a fact he is not.

She got her charm from her mother. The dark eyes and willingness to stab a man with an oyster fork she got from him.

Richard wipes at his mouth and eyes his grandfather warily. His back goes rigid under Peggy’s palm and she fights the urge to hold him closer.

They have to be very careful with her father. He sees everything. And gleefully slices through it all with words as sharp as the bayonet he wielded in the trenches.

Elizabeth bounds towards “Reggie” (only coworkers and irate daughters with chips on their shoulder call him Reginald) and leaps into his arms. Peggy notes how her daughter makes no effort to control her legs and sees the grimace on her father’s face when a foot gets careless and wings a bit of him that shouldn’t be winged.

He laughs and it’s a warm and booming sort of laugh that brings to mind cozy fires and warm sweaters.

He remarks a few times about how his granddaughter has grown and ruffles his grandson’s hair and jokes with him while pointedly ignoring the vomit chilling on the street.

Peggy is saved for last. It’s a firm sort of hug where she’s acutely aware of the muscles of his back that her fingers press against and the smoothness of his cheek against her own. He gives her a kiss just as he often did and his lips are wet and cool and taste of cigars.

“It’s good to see you.” He’s trying to be warm. Kind.

So she tries as well. Plasters on a smile. It’s haphazard and he can see that. His mustache dips a little.

They’re saved from further awkwardness by Cecile, who bounds out of the house and wraps Peggy up in a hug like they’re the oldest and best of friends.

She’s soft and bright and smells like Shalimar. She tells Peggy that it’s been too long and that’s she’s missed her and she leaves a wet kiss on Peggy’s cheek before standing back and taking her hands in her own. “So very long,” she says, and there are glittering tears in her bright brown eyes.

She holds Peggy’s hands in front of her. Clutches them like the two of them were something more than friends in school.

“You look so well, my dear,” Peggy says. Her voice is high, even in her own ears. Cheerful and girlish.

Cecile waves dismissively. “You,” she says, “you look wonderful! And after two children.” She’s eyeing all of Peggy in that way people often do when they realize she’s a mother of two and on her way to forty. “I wish I could have stayed so trim after Samuel.”

Naturally this is Samuel’s cue to appear in the doorway, clutching the frame of it like it’s his mother’s skirts. He’s tow-headed like Cecile. Big blond curls that need no iron to be tamed, but his eyes will go dark like his father’s one day and he has the cheekbones Peggy always assumed she got from her mother.

He’s shy and clearly appalled when Elizabeth, Richard trailing behind her, marches up to him to introduce herself.

Cecile’s so very amused by the children’s interaction. Reginald just glares imposingly, his great mustache hiding his displeasure.

####

Things go tits up shortly after that.

Well and truly.

It’s abominable.

While Peggy tries to enjoy a stifling tea with her father and her old school chum turned mother Elizabeth is busy in the ample playroom. Busy convincing Samuel that she and Richard are Russian spies out to stop the hegemonic capitalist.

Richard was the one that suggested they use the word “hegemonic.”

“It sounds scary,” he explains to Peggy and he has to say it loudly because Samuel won’t stop crying.

Neither Cecile or Reginald are amused by their son’s nightmares that night.

The next morning Cecile, dark circles under her eyes masked by makeup, suggests shopping with “just the girls.” Her smile is very tired and at odds with her absurdly bright voice and Peggy almost has the urge to apologize for her children.

The urge reappears when the three of them are having lunch and Peggy’s father calls to tell them Richard hasn’t stopped crying since they left.

“I’m afraid he and Elizabeth are peas in a pod,” she says. It’s the best excuse she can come up with. Only her father manages to glare at her with reproach—lecture her with nary a look. She’s got a boy and a girl and they’re too close, he seems to say. The boy’s soft and the girl’s too strong.

Peggy rankles and says nothing back. Just glares, because two can lecture with a look and she won’t have her father ruining a whole other generation of children.

Dinner that night is tedious **and** excruciating. By the end of it Peggy is curious to learn what about herself and her family Reginald Carter actually **likes**.

Afterwards she nearly folds and calls Angie. Who doesn’t need to be bombarded with something as silly as irritating cradle-robbing backseat parenting fathers.

She tells herself she just has to survive until the next day. That’s when they’ll all head out to the country to stay at Cecile’s family’s estate. There will be a dozen or more guests. And food. And dinner parties. And distraction after distraction that will keep Peggy and her children far away from the family they’ve ostensibly travelled half way across the world to visit.

She just has to survive that long.

####

And she does.

Miraculously she and the children are alive and well the next morning and Peggy allows herself to feel a little excitement about a long week at a country estate. Hunting and feasting and living a life Peggy Carter’s never considered living.

“Like a Jane Austen novel,” she can hear Angie say.

Angie would dearly love it.

Damn.

She really should have invited her.

Reginald, arm around Cecile’s shoulder, looks at their bags gathered in the front entry hall and then back at the car outside. A sporty two-seater.

“You’ll take the children with you,” Cecile says—more a demand than a plea, “won’t you?”

“After you’re done with that bit of work,” Reginald says, his teeth snapping on the word “work.”

She just had to tell them about the phone call back to SHIELD she needed to make. Didn’t she?

She gives the couple a pained smile. “Of course.”

Her father seems pleased with the situation he’s stuck her in. Cecile does too. She gives Peggy a quick squeeze and whispers “have fun” in her ear as though it’s going to be a great **lark** ferrying three children across the English countryside all on her own.

Again she considers calling Angie and moaning a bit about how supremely awful her family is.

Again she manages to resist.

Angie’s got a nice family—even if some of them are involved in criminal activities and her brother only has one leg because of a bank robbery gone wrong.

They’ve managed to come to some kind of terms with Angie’s sexuality and even accepted her in spite of it.

Versus Peggy’s father.

He’s…he’s…

He’s wretchedness wrapped up in tweed.

Something she dwells on after her call back to Washington.

Broods there at the kitchen table—her fingers drumming on the wood.

The doorbell rings and she starts to push herself out of her chair to answer.

But Richard’s faster—shouting through the house that he’ll get it. His little feet thumping noisily down the hall.

There’s cheering and gasping from the front of the house. Enough for Peggy to know she needs to see who it is.

“Richard,” she calls ahead, “I really have to insist that you don’t just answer the door like that! It could be any kind of murderer or thieve or—“

Brigand, a radically underused word in day to day conversation, stalls on her lips. Angie, arms around Richard and holding him tight, looks up. She’s in full on Angela Carter mode. Hair perfect, make up perfect, dress perfect. Perfect and cool. Angie takes up the whole entrance. Takes up this tremendous amount of space despite being a very small woman.

And takes the breath right out of Peggy.

Which gets Angie smirking, because she seems to know Peggy better than she knows herself. “Hey English,” she drawls, “miss me?”

####

While her own children are passingly familiar with Peggy and Angie publicly displaying affection Samuel is not. So Peggy drags Angie up to her bedroom and ignores Angie’s amused chuckle.

“Little greedy, wanting me all to yourself,” she says as Peggy pushes her back against the door to snog her good and proper.

“I missed you.”

“It’s been a couple of days.”

“Long, long days.”

That Angie was supposed to be spending in New York and then Hollywood.

She pulls back. “Why are you here?”

“Missed you too?”

Peggy frowns and Angie kisses the corner of her mouth. “Little birdy told me you were miserable and outgunned. Figured blowing off work was better than hearing you got arrested for murder.”

Little bird— “The children called you.”

Angie laughs. “You brought two astute kids into the world Peg. Not **that** astute.”

“Then who?”

“Your wicked stepmother.” She says it teasingly, tugging on Peggy’s nose and laughing.

But Peggy has to step away because, “ **Cecile** called you? She has the emotional intelligence of a scone.”

“Or she’s a smart cookie,” Angie smirks.

Peggy groans and turns her back on her. They’ve devolved into baked good puns. That can’t end well.

“Peggy, if you don’t want me here say the word. I can kiss the kids and hop a plane back to the States.”

“No,” she sighs and turns back again to face her girl, “No I definitely want you here. Likely I need you here. I’m just going to be stinging for the next few days because Cecile managed to do what I couldn’t.”

“True. Woman knows how to make the hard call.”

Peggy harrumphs.

Angie takes her hands in her own and her thumbs run back and forth across the top of Peggy’s knuckles. “If it helps I’m pretty sure she can’t jump out of planes though.”

Peggy sniffs, “That does help.”

“Or garrote a man with a scarf.”

Peggy nods.

“Or shoot the nipple off a bear at a hundred yards.”

Her slow smile turns into an exaggerated frown. “Now you’re just blowing smoke up my knickers.”

Angie winks, “And you’re loving every minute of it.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Peggy would like the world to acknowledge how extraordinary she is. Yes, it’s been a while since she’s needed any sort of express validation, and truthfully she doesn’t  **actually** need the world to acknowledge her own excellence. But honestly.

She’s driving down the road with Angie beside her and the other woman is laughing and in high spirits and perfectly blending the disparate elements that are Peggy and her children and Peggy herself deserves acknowledgement because she hasn’t insisted Angie pull the car over so they can have a proper snog like school-aged darlings.

Snog?

God, she’s been in England too long.

Only two days. Two **very** long days.

Her fingers itch to take Angie’s hand in hers and if her infant brother weren’t in the back seat, stuck between Elizabeth and Richard, she really would. But the boy’s a stranger and she and Angie can’t afford revealing very particular secrets about themselves to a stranger. Even one who’s just seven.

So she settles for a light touch on Angie’s forearm and then a shared smile that shatters her with warmth. Angie smiles and it’s a bit like looking into the sun for Peggy.

Angie’s eyes are hidden by the outrageously large sunglasses she wears so Peggy’s left reading just that smile and the bit of her brow not obfuscated.

Which means she’s only getting half the story and can’t possibly guess what Angie’s up to when she shouts in alarm and pulls the car over into the high grass.

“Would you look at those sheep,” Angie cries. “Have you ever seen such wooly sheep?”

Richard climbs over young Samuel to get a gander and Elizabeth half hangs out of the car, elbows bumping against warm metal. “Where,” she shouts.

Peggy squints. She can’t see the sheep either. Just acres of that high grass that itches when your walk through it and stubby trees that would grab at your clothes if you got to close.

She hears a click as Angie undoes her seatbelt and then feels her slide up against her. One hand, clothed in a thin doe-skin driving glove, points out towards the pasture.

“There,” Angie breathes. Her breath is warm and even soured by the day it still smells sweet.

If Peggy were to turn and look at Angie her lips could just press to Angie’s cheek. It be so innocuous. So easy.

Angie’s hand’s on Peggy’s seat, bracing herself. Her other hand’s still extended. Carefully clothed breasts pressed to Peggy’s back. She’s so sensitive she’s sure she can feel the seams of Angie’s bra through her own light jacket and shirt.

Angie turns her head and Peggy knows she’s looking at the children, but feels her eyes hot upon herself. “There,” she says, “see.”

Now even little Samuel is curious and wedging between his niece and nephew to look for the sheep.

The children bicker and cajole as they all try to spy the errant creatures. Peggy should be paying attention to them. Should be **minding** them, but Angie’s so close that Peggy can put her hand on Angie’s hip and it’s nothing more than friendly—exquisite—but friendly contact.

“Do you see them,” Angie whispers. Low and throaty. A little conspiratorial smirk in her voice.

“I think I see something,” Peggy says. Her own breath is thundering in her ears and she’s sure the whole world can see—can feel what’s passing between them in the moment.

Oh a kiss in then would be so perfect. But they settle for just being close enough to kiss. Open mouths hovering close. Lipstick un-smudged. Powder in place.

“I see it,” Elizabeth squeals and at any other time the moment would be shattered.

Only sheep do emerge from the thick brush at the tree line. Happy and shaggy sheep that will need to be shorn soon.

Richard is talking about how dirty they are and Elizabeth recounts some fact about their wool while Samuel silently looks from one twin to the other.

Peggy sees it all out the corner of her eye. She’s watching Angie. “How’d you see them,” she asks.

The way her cheek twitches means she must wink. “Just luck I guess.”

They pull back onto the road and Angie’s fingers drum across the steering wheel. She begins humming a song. Peggy, elbow on the door and hand resting in hand, hums along.

####

They arrive when the world has gone all yellow. Just as the sun begins to set and catches in the foliage. Howard could probably explain why that happens. Or that girl, Maria. They’re very clever.

Peggy doesn’t particularly care, but she does thing it makes the great estate they drive up to look slightly less impressive. It’s more **cozy** in the waning light of day. Not huge and pale and austere.

Angie whistles and feigns being dazzled.

“Imagine the electric bill in winter.”

Peggy rolls her eyes. “They probably just put the servants on bikes in the basement and make them pedal.”

“Or burn ‘em for fuel.”

“Only when they can’t find serfs from the countryside.”

Angie snickers and then Samuel whimpers and both women wince. They’re going to make him cry again and Reginald will be hopping mad.

But Elizabeth, of all people, soothes her little uncle and tells him they’re only joking.

Peggy refuses to glance backwards because she’s terrified her young daughter will be giving her a sharp look like only scolding parents should be able to give.

A butler waits for them as they pull up. But not like Jarvis in his boxy tweed coats and smart hats. This is the sort of butler that wears a coat and tails during the day.

“Feelin’ a little underdressed,” Angie mutters under her breath.

“Just don’t show any fear darling. They’ll smell it on you like sharks.”

As Angie puts on the brakes more people trickle out the entrance. There’s Peggy’s father and his wife, already dressed for cocktails and dinner. Then two fellas still in hunting garb who must be other guests. One’s got hair blond enough to make the Fürher’s heart pitter patter and the other has a thick beard usually more at home on the face of a longshoreman.

Another man and woman emerge and Peggy knows them immediately as Cecile’s brother Roger and his wife Mary, another old school “chum” she would really rather not see.

The two young men in hunting garb are both immediately fascinated with the car. Mary, lips pursed tighter than her dead aunt’s pocketbook, looks from the car to the passengers. There’s a hint of anger when she spies Angie, but she’s all cool when her eyes settle on Peggy.

And unpleasant too. There’s something lurking there that has the pit of Peggy roiling.

“Reggie,” Roger says—voice dry as the vermouth that goes into his martinis, “I’d no idea you had a car like this just tucked away out of sight.”

The one with the beard is squatting down beside the car to judge its aerodynamics like an RAF pilot. “A car like this should never just be tucked away.”

“It’s not mine,” Reggie old chum, growls. Well, he doesn’t growl. Growling would be uncouth. But with his jaw clenched that tight the words do have to struggle to escape his mouth.

Angie slaps the dashboard a little too loudly to be polite. “The car was my idea. Thought a drive through the countryside ought to be in style.”

Roger’s face brightens more and more as Angie talks before he has to exclaim, “You’re Angela Carter!”

If Reginald didn’t have that mustache covering most of the bottom of his face the whole party would be able to see the very thin and very displeased line of his mouth.

Angie smiles and turns on that charm bit of her Peggy calls Angela. “That’s me,” she says with a demure duck of her head. “And you must be our host, Lord Roger Wallenbach.”

The man actually **blushes** at the recognition. Then waves his hand, “Please. Anyone spending a night under my roof must call me Roger.”

“Roger, it’s just wonderful to meet you.” Angela Carter has a way with pleasantries that makes them all sound so much more sincere.

Mary’s drags her eyes over Angie as if she’d seen her wearing a hideous dress. Her disgust—while very quiet and reserved—oozes off of her. “You bought the car for a trip to the country?”

Old money gnashing at the new.

It rankles Peggy, but if it rankles Angie none of them can tell. Her laughter is bright. Like the clean ring of a bell cutting through the din in a hotel lobby. “Oh definitely not. A friend in London is as passionate about cars as I am. He was only too happy to loan it to me for a little while.”

Peggy ducks her head to hide her smile, but Mary sees it and unflattering lines crease around her eyes.

“What about you? Did you buy the house just for the weekend,” Angie asks.

And everyone is quiet for a moment as Mary stews. Then Roger laughs and the others join in.

Roger ushers them into the house and tells them not to worry a bit about their bags. The children are reluctant to leave, more eager to watch servants wordlessly pull their things out of the car and carry them in.

Samuel is less impressed then his niece and nephew. In fact the little boy is perfectly at home in the large home with all the servants. So it’s up to Peggy to guide her children inside.

A nanny meets Peggy in the foyer. She’s tall, terrifying and imposing. Exactly the kind of woman her children salivate at the chance to ruin. She’s also got another sprat with her. Mary and Roger’s, Peggy assumes from the way Samuel delights at the child’s arrival.

Knowing Elizabeth and Richard, Peggy insists on staying with them until they’re acquainted with the nanny and have agreed not to commit heinous acts in Peggy’s absence.

When she finally returns downstairs Angie hands her a drink and stops herself from kissing her cheek. Mary’s eyes are hot on the two of them and she sips her drink and glares.

“How bad is it,” Angie asks under her breath.

Peggy sighs, “They agreed to behave.”

She raises an eyebrow because Peggy’s children are notorious for **rarely** behaving. Especially if it’s at the request of their mother—with whom they both have a shockingly contentious relationship.

“I bribed them.”

It’s not something Peggy’s proud of. Everyone with a parenting bone in their body has told her bribing her children is awful, but she’s found it to be rather wonderful. It’s a contract as sound as any other, and they **behave** when she bribes them. Why on earth should she try some other unproven tact when bribery works so well?

####

Never mind.

Bribery is bollocks.

That’s the conclusion she comes to at dinner. The children are being fed elsewhere because God forbid children sit at a table with adults. Adults who have all chosen to dress like they’re in a costume melodrama. Peggy’s in a gown and has her hair swept back and still feels underdressed.

She looks enviously at the silk stole Angie remembered to pack for herself. It looks glamorous around Angie’s shoulders.

And comfortable.

But back to the bribery.

Being one of the first one’s into the dining room, and a spymaster of some note, Peggy naturally sees the bearded fellow slip a bill to a server so that he can sit beside Peggy instead of across from her.

“Thomas Sanger,” he says when they’re being seated. He’s got a charming grin. Big white teeth that sparkle against the dark hair of his beard. “Esquire.”

Peggy is very good and does not look at Angie, who is now sitting across from her and likely smirking if she’s watching. She also refuses to look at Reginald. He **won’t** be smiling, but will probably have some kind of glare directed at her and imbued with all sorts of warning.

She can manage, at least through the course of one meal, to be polite.

Only Thomas Sanger, and his blond friend, Edwin Loving, hail from Roger’s RAF days and they’re the exact sort of pilots she avoided at the aerodrome. The three of them like to make jokes they think are sly, but really aren’t. Not in the current company, made up of spies and their wives and an old school chum who likes to pretend she’s simple when she’s really very clever.

Loving is a little better. He’s a banker who spends much of his time in Switzerland. But Sanger, with his hearty laugh and dowdy double entedres is in “imports/exports.”

Which means the tit is a smuggler.

Everyone but Roger, the poor dear, must catch that. When Mary’s not scowling at Angie’s she’s scoffing quietly or catching Cecile’s eye to mock the man in silence.

After dinner Peggy’s terrified the men will peel off with some nonsense about cigars and being manly bloody idiots.

Thankfully, Mary is still as brass-balled as she was in school and insists they all enjoy their digestifs **together**.

Angie sits just beside Peggy on a chaise and her knee sometimes bumps her’s as she controls the conversation as deftly as any car she’s behind the wheel of.

Reginald is clearly irritated by her “friend” being there and being popular. Peggy has to lean back so she can watch it all smugly.

Though the work part of her does thrum to life when Thomas Sanger, Esquire, mentions his gun misfiring on the hunt today. “Nearly killed me,” he admits with a chuckle. Which is an odd thing for a hunting rifle to do. Particularly as well maintained as one should be when provided by a host like Roger’s.

Mary says that’s just **dreadful** and Angie jokes that his death would have ruined a lovely party.

She gets up to use the facilities then and Sanger takes her place on the chaise. Leans in and says in a low voice. “Are you enjoying yourself Margaret? You’ve been quiet all evening.”

“Peggy.”

There’s that grin again. “You don’t strike me as a Peggy.” He smells like the back room of that little bar the Commandoes were so fond of.

“Oh?”

“Peggy’s aren’t so ravishing as you.”

She laughs. She can’t help it. Sanger thinks it’s because she finds him clever. Really she’s just shocked someone’s attempted a line that awful.

“You must be spending too much time down at the docks Mr. Sanger, because that’s the only place a line like that would work.”

Peggy’s retort, as scathing as it is, is too loud for the company she’s keeping. Mary hears and gasps and Reginald sharply says “Margaret” and Angie returns and looks around the silent room and asks “What I miss?”

####

“Well this is sure as heck gonna be your most memorable family gathering.”

Peggy groans and falls back onto Angie’s bed. “Angie please.”

Angie’s carefully hanging her stole on a velvet—lined hanger. “I don’t know what’s got your dad madder. You laying out that fella verbally or you seeing me back to my room just now.”

“I expect he’s waiting to give me a stern talking too.”

“Margaret,” Angie says in an excellent approximation of Sir Reginald Carter, “that lesbian lover of yours has got to go.”

Peggy throws her arm over her face. “That would require him acknowledging your existence.”

Angie’s now at her dressing table removing her earrings and she catches Peggy’s eye in the mirror. “I think he said about three things to me tonight.”

“Two things.” She holds up her fingers to tick them off. “’Pass the salt’ and ‘excuse me.’”

“Least he’s polite.”

“And only slightly more sufferable than Thomas bloody Sanger.”

Angie laughs. “I don’t see why you’re so upset over his interest. I was sitting right there looking good enough to photograph and the guy only had eyes for you.” She flutters her eyelashes.

Peggy sits up on her elbows and levels a light frown at her and she laughs and returns to removing all her accoutrements.

“He’s a brute,” Peggy finally says pointedly. “And a criminal…And a bit of a tit.”

“Nice teeth.”

“Lovely teeth.”

She extends one hand and watches the way Angie drags herself from the dressing table to slink over. In her cocktail finery there’s a kind of otherness to Angie, muted only by the loss of jewelry and her hair down now to her shoulders. She hitches up the sides of her dress and carefully straddles Peggy. Settles her weight on her legs. Lets Peggy lace their fingers together before she draws up one hand and carefully kisses Peggy’s knuckles.

“Thank you.” Peggy is embarrassingly throaty with her gratitude.

Angie barely looks up from her delicate ministrations. “For what?”

“For coming here. And staying. And being a saint and—“

And she’s cut off by the press of Angie’s lips to her own.

“You’d do the same for me,” Angie whispers against her lips. One very lovely eyebrow quirks upwards. “In fact you have. Thanksgiving ’53?”

That was the first time Peggy met Angie’s mother. They drove up with the children to her brownstone in Brooklyn. There was a great deal more seafood than Peggy was accustomed to for the American holiday.

And not nearly enough pie.

And a lot of praying.

“Your mother was a delight.”

“She called you my ‘friend’ and spent half the weekend praying for my eternal soul.”

“Then she realized she was getting two delightful grandchildren out of the bargain.”

Angie chuckles and rolls off of Peggy to lie on her side and keeps one hand pressed against her chest. It’s a pleasant kind of pressure and Peggy hold’s Angie hand there.

“Guess the promise of grandchildren isn’t gonna work on Daddy Carter.”

“Have you seen how he looks at them? I think they remind him of his own mortality.”

“Peggy—“ She’s trying to talk Peggy down, but there’s a bit of a laugh there.

“Honestly. He looks at them like they’re the Grim Reaper. I half expect him to chuck Samuel at them as a sacrifice.”

“Not his wife?”

“Too old.”

That’s the bit that breaks Angie. She laughs and Peggy joins her and they lie on the bed in perfectly companionable silence. Angie’s fingers have worked their way over the top of Peggy’s dress and her palm now presses to Peggy’s skin.

“Was this what it was like with Daniel,” she asks.

Peggy startles at the question and glances at her out the corner of her eye. “He never looked as good in a dress.”

“I’m serious. With your dad and all. Was it like this?”

“Us against him?”

Angie nods.

“I don’t suppose it was.” She looks up at the ceiling. It’s dark wood panels with fanciful scenes carved into them. They’re stiff and staid under the glow of the bedside light, but Peggy can almost imagine how they would have danced against the flickering light of an oil lamp. “We never made it to England—together at least. And Daniel—“

She looks over at Angie. “You must know there’s no comparison.”

“I do.” Her palm shifts so her thumb can graze Peggy’s collar bone. “I guess occasions like this just kind of remind me you know? That we’re not like most other couples.”

Couples who can touch in public and share quick kisses and don’t have to fend off loathsome men at dinner parties or dance around seven-year-old boys.

There’s nothing Peggy can say to soothe this particular pang. Not when she feels it just as acutely. So she settles for pressing her palm to Angie’s cheek and pulling her close to kiss her again and again and again.

Then she asks if she can stay the night and Angie’s confused until she remembers where they are. “You’re gonna sneak in through the window?”

Peggy nods and nuzzles her cheek with her nose. “Bright side of being lesbians is we’re never nearly as boring as the heterosexuals.”

 


End file.
